Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart. Charlotte Hawkes

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СКАЧАТЬ could meet her new colleagues. The night before, he’d seen Anouk as a focussed, driven, dedicated doctor. And she’d been so uncomfortable that it had been clear that clubs definitely weren’t her thing.

      He’d seen her from across the room. She’d looked up and met his gaze and something unfamiliar and inexplicable had punched through him. Like a fist right to his chest. Or his gut.

      If it had been any other woman he would have gone over, bought her a drink, probably spent the night with her. Uncomplicated, mutually satisfying sex between adults. What could be better? But as much as his body might have greedily wanted the pretty blonde across the room, possibly more than he’d wanted any woman, something had sounded a warning bell in his head, holding him back.

      And then someone had spiked her drink—they must have done because he’d seen her go from responsible to disorientated in the space of half a drink—and he’d found himself swooping in to play some kind of knight in shining armour, before any of her colleagues could see her.

      Sol couldn’t have said how he knew that would have mattered to her more than almost anything else. There was no plausible explanation for the...connection he’d felt with her.

      So he’d alerted the manager to the situation before pushing his way across the room, grabbing the dazed Anouk’s bag and coat and putting his arm around her before anyone else could see her, and leading her out of the nightclub.

      Only one person had challenged him on the way out, a belligerent, narrow-eyed, spotty kid he hadn’t known, who he suspected had been the one to spike Anouk’s drink. It hadn’t taken more than a scowl from Sol to send the kid slinking back to the shadows.

      He’d got Anouk home and made sure she was settled and safely asleep in bed before he’d left her. The way he knew Saskia would have been doing if she hadn’t snuck away by that point. Along with his brother. Sol had seen them leave. Together. So wrapped up in each other that they hadn’t even noticed anyone else.

      He’d headed back to the club to advise them of the situation, before calling it a night; there had been a handful of women all more than willing to persuade him to stay. None of them had enticed him that night.

      Or since. If he was being honest.

      Not that Malachi knew that he knew any of it, of course, and he wasn’t about to mention it to his big brother. Not here, anyway. Not now. Not when it included Saskia. If the pair of them had wanted him to know they’d ever got together then they wouldn’t have pretended they didn’t know each other back when Malachi had brought Izzy’s mum up to the ward and Saskia had explained to her what was going on with the little girl.

      He’d tackle Malachi about it some other time, when he could wind him up a little more about it. The way the two of them usually did.

      Sol glowered into his coffee rather than meet Malachi’s characteristically sharp gaze.

      ‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I remember everything you went through to raise us, Mal. I know you sold your soul to the devil just to get enough money to buy food for our bellies.’

      For a moment, he could feel his brother’s eyes boring into him, but still Sol couldn’t bring himself to look up.

      ‘Bit melodramatic, aren’t you, bratik?’ Malachi gritted out. ‘Is this about Izzy?’

      ‘I guess.’

      His second lie of the night to his brother.

      ‘Yeah. Well,’ Malachi bit out at length. ‘No need to get soppy about it.’

      ‘Right.’

      Downing the last of the cold coffee and grimacing, Sol crushed the plastic cup and lobbed it into the bin across the hallway. The perfect drop shot. Malachi grunted his approval.

      ‘You ever wondered what might have happened if we’d had a different life?’ The question was out before he could stop himself. ‘Not had a drug addict for a mother, or had to take care of her and keep her away from her dealer every spare minute?’

      ‘No,’ Malachi shut him down instantly. ‘I don’t. I don’t ever think about it. It’s in our past. Done. Gone.’

      ‘What the hell kind of childhood was that for us?’ Sol continued regardless. ‘Our biggest concern should have been whether we wanted an Action Man or Starship Lego for Christmas, not keeping her junkie dealer away from her.’

      ‘Well, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known you were going to get maudlin on me.’

      ‘You were eight, Mal. I was five.’

      ‘I know how old we were,’ Malachi growled. ‘What’s got into you, Sol? It’s history. Just leave it alone.’

      ‘Right.’

      Sol pressed his lips into a grim line as the brothers lapsed back into silence. Malachi could claim their odious childhood was in the rear-view mirror as much as he liked, but they both knew that if they’d really locked the door on their past then they wouldn’t have founded Care to Play, their centre where young carers from the age of merely five up to sixteen could just unwind and be kids instead of responsible for a parent or a sibling.

      If there had been anything like that around when he and Malachi had been kids, he liked to think it could have made a difference. Then again, he and Mal had somehow defied the odds, hadn’t they?

      Would the strait-laced Anouk think him less of an arrogant playboy if she knew that about him?

       Geez, why did he even care?

      Shooting to his feet abruptly, Sol shoved his hands in his pockets.

      ‘I’m going to check on some of my patients upstairs, then I’ll be back to see Izzy.’

      He didn’t wait for his brother to respond, but he could picture Malachi’s head dip even as he strode down the corridor and through the fire door onto the stairwell.

      He wasn’t ready for Anouk to come bounding up the steps and, by the way she stopped dead when she saw him, she was equally startled.

      ‘You’re still here?’ she faltered.

      ‘Indeed.’

      ‘I’d have thought you’d have gone home by now. I heard Izzy’s mum arrived.’

      She glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if checking no one could see them talking. He could well imagine she didn’t want to be seen as the next notch on his bedpost. He almost wanted to ask her how much free time she imagined a young neurosurgeon to have that he could possibly have made time for so many women.

      He bit his tongue.

      What did it matter to him if she believed he was as bad as all those stories? Besides, hadn’t he played up to every one of them over the years? Better people thought him a commitment-phobe than realise the truth about him.

      Whatever the truth even was.

      ‘Mal and I stayed to help.’

      ‘Mal?’

      ‘Malachi.’

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